I can see how this hack would be perfect for getting ginger flavor into drinks, without having to spend the time (and sugar) making a syrup. I have to confess that my "hack" for ginger, when garlic is used in stir-fries and curries, etc., is to use the trick recommended by Monica Bhide in her book, Modern Spice. She recommends for weeknight use the crushed garlic/ginger blends in jars from the Indian grocer. I buy "Shan" brand, which works perfectly well (though I usually add a touch of fresh garlic, because the ginger in those blends tends to dominate). I am so glad I looked at the comments here, though, because I do like to use fresh ginger in a variety of ways, and have been underwhelmed by the microplane as a tool for grating it. I like the convenience of maggiesara's method of peeling, freezing and grating the ginger frozen -- and especially, that freezing improves the performance of the microplane. I am definitely trying that "hack", too! ;o)

I'm not sure I agree. At least for me, most of the time when I'm using ginger, it's in a Chinese or other Asian dish, and usually I'm sitr-frying it with garlic at the beginning. Sure, I could throw in some ginger-juice later, with other liquids (stock, soy sauce, rice wine, etc.) that I might be adding, but I wouldn't have flavored the oil, and I wouldn't have the caramelized/toasted notes.

FWIW, MY ginger-trick came about because I got tired of having to buy a whacking amount of ginger when all I wanted was, like, a tablespoon for a stir-fry. Or rather, I got tired of throwing away the dried-up ginger I found, weeks later, in the vegetable drawer. Now, when I buy ginger, I peel all of it, use what I need, and freeze the rest. When next I need ginger, I use a Microplane to grate it, still frozen. No waste, I always have fresh ginger on hand, and the Microplane (which does not work as well on unfrozen ginger) is heaps faster than mincing and both faster and safer (no more bloody knuckles!) than a box-grater.